1996 UCS User Survey - Survey Summary

Comments

For most of the questions, the average response, level of satisfaction, and
estimated usage are reported in column format. The average score is simply an
average of the respondents' answers if they specified a rating of on the scale
of 1 to 5 (1=not at all satisfied with a service, 5=very satisfied). The level
of satisfaction is the percentage of respondents who answered 3 to 5 on the 5
point scale. Usage is the percent of respondents who felt they had enough
experience with a given service to make a judgement concerning their
satisfaction (i.e. their response ranges from 1 to 5 and therefore did respond
that they had little or no knowledge of a service). In parentheses immediately
following the usage percentage, is the total number of respondents who expressed
an opinion -- eg. "95.1% (360)" indicates that three-hundred and sixty
individuals rated this service. Finally, for some items only certain
subpopulations were reported (graduate, undergraduate, faculty, staff, or a
combination of each). The subpopulations included are indicated by square
brackets (e.g. "[F&S]" indicates faculty and staff). For more information on
the sample and a copy of the survey instrument, see the Methodology and
Survey Form
sections, respectively.

General questions

1. Overall, how satisfied are you with the services offered by University
Computing Services (UCS) during the past year?

Average score:

3.96

Satisfaction :

97.5%

Usage:

95.1% (377)

2. Overall, how important are the UCS systems and services (e.g. electronic
mail, research computers, library on-line catalog, World Wide Web, campus
network, telephone consulting at 5-6789, public computing facilities) to your
work or study?

Average score:

4.65

Usage:

98.5% (383)

(1=unimportant, 5=extremely important)

3. About how many hours did you use a computer in the past seven days?

Average:

13.5 hours

4. Would you call yourself a computer novice or expert?

Average:

2.8

(1= novice, 5=expert)

5. Do you personally own a microcomputer (e.g. PC, Macintosh, Unix
Workstation)?

Yes:

53.8 %

5a. If you own a computer, does your computer have a modem, either external
or internal?

Yes:

81.9 %

Electronic mail

6. UCS supports a variety of electronic mail systems to send messages
(e-mail) to others at IU and at other institutions worldwide. Please indicate
your level of satisfaction with the following electronic mail services.

Average Score

Satisfaction Percentage

Usage Percentage

Pine (the mailer on the Shakespeare systems)

4.24

95.3%

82.5% (372)

Elm (or other Unix-based mail on UCS systems)

3.50

88.5%

12.3% (353)

Workstation mail (Eudora, Pegasus, GroupWise)

3.97

95.6%

27.7% (361)

E-mail to or from off-campus correspondents (Internet)

4.26

97.2%

84.9% (372)

Infostations (public computers for brief e-mail sessions)

3.82

98.0%

59.8% (221) [G&U]

User support services

7. UCS provides a range of assistance for computer users. If you have
received any help from any of the following sources in the past year, please
indicate your level of satisfaction.

Average Score

Satisfaction Percentage

Usage Percentage

Computing support personnel employed by your dept.

3.81

86.5%

88.3% (151) [F&S]

Telephone consulting (Support Center, 855-6789)

3.74

83.8%

56.0% (378)

Walk-in consulting, disk recovery, VMS/Unix account

4.04

93.9%

35.9% (376)

On-line sign-up system for accounts on UCS computers

4.06

94.9%

35.3% (376)

Electronic mail consulting via UCS Support Center

3.91

93.8%

26.3% (380)

On-line consulting resources (UCS Help On-line, etc)

3.87

94.0%

27.6% (373)

UCS publications on paper (Quick guides)

3.82

91.9%

36.2% (377)

UCS publications on-line

3.97

94.4%

31.6% (377)

UCS Department Advising and Support (DCAS)

3.41

82.0%

21.3% (150) [F&S]

Software distribution via Softserve

3.99

92.1%

31.2% (366)

ACCESS MicroCenter

3.98

92.3 %

26.0% (374)

UCS education classes and workshops

4.17

94.2%

36.3% (380)

Database Support Group

3.40

86.1%

9.3% (253) [F,S&G]

Local area network support (Novell, Apple Servers, etc.)

3.71

87.9%

36.1% (253) [F,S&G]

Research and instruction facilities and services

8. Alone, or in partnership with other campus units, UCS provides facilities
and services in support of research and instruction. If you use such facilities
and services, please indicate your overall satisfaction with them

Average Score

Satisfaction Percentage

Usage Percentage

Public Computing Facilities hardware (computers, etc.)

3.96

92.5%

80.5% (225) [G&U]

3.33

74.1%

44.3% (61) [F]

Public Computing Facilities software

4.20

97.6%

77.9% (225) [G&U]

3.56

77.8%

44.3% (61) [F]

Public Computing Facilities consulting

3.76

89.3%

57.8% (224) [G&U]

3.11

68.4%

31.1% (61) [F]

Shared academic computing systems

3.86

92.4%

34.4% (363)

Unix Workstation Support Group

3.54

91.7%

5.9% (238) [F,S&G]

Center for Innovative Computer Applications

3.67

83.4%

7.9% (163) [F&G]

Teaching & Learning Technologies Laboratory (TLTL)

4.54

100.0%

21.7% (60) [F]

LETRS (Library Electronic Text Resource Service)

3.99

90.0%

10.4% (164) [F&G]

Center for Statistical and Mathematical Computing

3.88

78.4%

19.9% (162) [F&G]

Network Services

9. UCS support access to and use of various network information services and
tools. If you use such tools, please indicate your overall satisfaction with
them.

Average Score

Satisfaction Percentage

Usage Percentage

World Wide Web

4.31

97.2%

91.0% (378)

Usenet news groups

3.74

85.0%

23.0% (377)

Mailing list servers (Listserv, Majordomo)

3.94

92.8%

40.1% (374)

Personal World Wide Web home pages

4.21

99.0%

43.4% (373)

First class conferencing software

4.15

97.2%

21.3% (222) [G&U]

4.17

83.3%

10.0% (60) [F]

IUB Lockers (Argon, Neon, Krypton, etc.)

3.92

86.6%

26.5% (227)[G&U]

3.8

80.0%

8.1% (62) [F]

Information services accessible over the network

3.54

83.2%

52.1% (372)

Standard dial-in modem services

2.95

67.6%

59.7% (62) [F]

3.44

86.1%

40.9% (88) [S]

3.55

83.6%

65.0% (103) [G]

3.64

85.2%

49.2% (124) [U]

Extended dial-in modem services (PPP, etc.)

2.88

66.7%

40.0% (60) [F]

3.58

83.3%

27.6% (87) [S]

3.64

85.0%

27.7% (101) [G]

3.4

79.1%

35.0% (123) [U]

Office or lab network connection (Ethernet data jack)

4.2

96.9%

54.7% (149) [F&S]

Halls of residence direct network connection

4.44

100.0%

8.7% (103) [G]

3.76

86.8%

30.6% (124) [U]

Institutional data services

10. UCS serves as a central repository for many types of institutional data.
These include, for example, student data, grades, personnel data and faculty
records, financial data, library information, and others. Does your position
require access to such computer-based information, data, and/or services?

Percent responding 'yes':

64% [S]

51% [F]

11. Do you have access to all of the institutional data you need to do your
job?

Miscellaneous

13. During 1995-96, UCS has made a major effort to improve our shared
computing systems. This Central Systems Retooling Project included as its goals
migration from the Academic Information Environment (AIE) to the World Wide Web
(WWW) and migration from VMS Mail to Pine on the Shakespeare systems. Please
rate your overall satisfaction with this project.

Average score:

3.99

Satisfaction :

94.4%

Usage:

73.6% (377)

14. Setting aside your opinion of the goals of this project (the selection of
WWW versus the AIE, and Pine versus VMS Mail), please rate your satisfaction
with the process by which UCS provided information and assistance to guide your
migration to the new systems and services.

Average score:

4.05

Satisfaction :

94.1%

Usage:

81.5% (374)

15. This question was a multiple response question that presented a list of
fourteen items, and asked the respondent to indicate the three most important
improvements that UCS could make to computing services. The items are listed
below according to the number of respondents (extrapolated to the IU campus as a
whole) indicating that a particular item was one of the three most important
areas of improvement.

Item

Percentage of IU community
indicating item as an important
area of improvement

More computers in public computing facilities

68.9%

Increased availability of dial-in modems (fewer busy signals)

50.8%

More and/or different software in public computing facilities

21.5%

More computing support staff in your department

21.1%

More support for departments providing information on UCS WWW servers

19.5%

More and/or faster Unix computers used for research and instruction

18.8%

Other [details specified by user]

12.5%

Tools for backing up your personal computer or workstation over the
network

11.3%

More summary documentation about shared academic systems

10.5%

More classes on what shared academic systems can do for you

9.4%

More classes on how to use shared academic systems

7.7%

More and/or different software on Unix computers for research &
instruction

5.4%

A central data archiving and retrieval service for storing large data
sets